Java tainting your kernel

In the latest Linux kernels, it is possible to mark the kernel as "tainted" from userspace, if a program does something incredibly naughty that could make the kernel unstable. When a kernel is marked as "tainted", if it crashes and you send a bug report to the Linux kernel developers, they will either not help you or they will ask "hard questions" about what you were doing.

Rightly so - the kernel devs can't fix a problem that's been caused by binary drivers or programs doing dumb things.

On lwn.net, there is a discussion about this, along with the revelation (to me) that Java actually has functions for letting a Java application developer directly read and write all system memory. (this is called RTSJ). The last poster in the discussion says:

It seems that Java's absurdity would be moreeasily noticed once all computer OS vendors asked to implement RTSJ compliance also had to implement unfettered access to all physical memory. And besides, what do they need all that memory for?

My reply: If you'd ever used Java, you would have already noted that it appears to use all your physical memory :-)

As an aside: Is this possibly why running Java applications tended to make my Mac unstable, even after they had been quit?